Dog day morning

As you may or may not know, I commute about 44 miles each way every day. This provides me 3 hours alone in the car everyday, or 15 hours a week. That's about 780 hours a year....or 32 days a year. You get my point. Some days are better than others and I'm constantly fighting the onset of depression. Any sort of interesting event that occurs outside my car becomes my own personal Zoloft. If 2 weeks pass without anything exciting I began contemplating suicide by slapping my face against the steering wheel. The only thing that keeps me from going through with it is the unstable scenario of the air bag simply going off causing me to let out a girlish scream and rear-end someone. Then I'd just show up to work with a Zantjer-style forehead carpet burn and the only thing damaged being my pride.

This past Friday, I was in a particularly good mood on my commute in. Fridays are always happier because the weekend is right around the corner, we dress casual at work, and I zone out for 8 hours (not to mention I get on an AOL chat room with Hutch every Friday so that we can cyber).

So here I am cruising toward the freeway on Rufe Snow when I notice the car in front of me come to a stop. I immediately start prairie dogging to see what was going on. Sadly, I noticed a dead, boxer-sized dog in the middle lane. This, unfortunately, is nothing out of the ordinary, but what happened next definitely is.

I noticed a middle-aged woman walking through 3 lanes or traffic towards the dog. At this point, all 3 lanes are completely stopped and observing this woman. My initial thought was that she worked for Animal Control or something and was going to bag up the carcass. She looked sort of like a female Steve Buscemi without the cool points (because we all know Steve is the epitome of cool). Still, Steve doesn't make for an attractive chick. Then, I noticed her clothes and realized this was no government worker at all, this was a homeless broad. I also noticed that she wasn't carrying any sort of shovel, bag, or even gloves. She then leaned over and grabbed the dog by it's freaking tail and proceeded to drag it across the 3 lanes. No gloves or anything! I looked in the car next to me and watched a mom's jaw drop as her child pointed out this event. Many thoughts were spinning in my head as I was trying to figure out why she would do this. Was she merely a good samaritan doing a solid for our fine community? Was she checking to see if the dog was still alive? Then it hit me and I literally said out loud, to myself:

"Oh no, this lady is going to eat this f-ing dog."

Moments later, she dropped the dog along the curb and walked off. I let out a sigh of relief but my confusion sustained. And while I still have no idea of her agenda, I am pleased that I witnessed it. Just thought I'd share this with you. I hope this story will provide you with something to ponder on today's commute home.

Save the rainforests.